{"id":1927,"date":"2013-10-20T10:16:03","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T09:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geraldgarcia.com\/wordpress\/?p=1927"},"modified":"2013-10-20T18:27:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T17:27:44","slug":"why-is-it-that-whenever-i-hear-a-piece-of-music-i-dont-like-its-always-by-villa-lobos-stravinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/?p=1927","title":{"rendered":"“Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa Lobos?” – Stravinsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>
\nMusical insults, you have to take them with a pinch of salt, or you would never carry on!<\/strong> (Perhaps that is the point!)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a>
\nHere are some more choice ones, courtesy of Classic FM<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Also see Nicolas Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective<\/a> <\/strong>for some real critical stinkers !<\/p>\n

Some examples…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Wozzeck<\/a><\/td>\n\n

Alban Berg<\/a><\/h4>\n
Wozzeck (Wiener Philharmoniker\/Claudio Abbado)<\/a>\u00a0(1989)<\/h5>\n

“As I left the State Opera last night I had a sensation not of coming out of a public institution, but out of an insane asylum….<\/p>\n

“I regard Alban Berg as a musical swindler and a musician dangerous to the community. \u00a0One should go even further. \u00a0Unprecedented events demand new methods. \u00a0We must seriously pose the question as to what extent musical profession can be criminal. \u00a0We deal here, in the realm of music, with a capital offense.”<\/p>\n

(1925 review of\u00a0Wozzeck<\/em>, p. 54)<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Symphony<\/a><\/td>\nAnton Bruckner<\/a><\/b>“We recoil in horror before this rotting odor which rushes into our nostrils from the disharmonies of this putrefactive counterpoint. \u00a0His imagination is so incurably sick and warped that anything like regularity in chord progressions and period structure simply do not exist for him. \u00a0Bruckner composes like a drunkard!”(1886 article, pp. 80-81)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"La<\/a><\/td>\n\n

Claude Debussy<\/a><\/h4>\n
La Mer; Nocturnes; Jeux; Rhapsodie pour clarinette et orchestre (The Cleveland Orchestra\/Pierre Boulez)<\/a>\u00a0(1995)<\/h5>\n

“The Sea<\/em>\u00a0of Debussy does not call for many words of comment. \u00a0The three parts of which it is composed are entitled\u00a0From Dawn till Noon<\/em>,\u00a0Play of the Waves<\/em>, and\u00a0Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea<\/em>, but as far as any pictorial suggestiveness is concerned, they might as well have been entitled\u00a0On the Flatiron Building<\/em>,\u00a0Slumming in the Bowery<\/em>, and\u00a0A Glimpse of Chinatown During a Raid<\/em>. \u00a0Debussy’s music is the dreariest kind of rubbish. \u00a0Does anybody for a moment doubt that Debussy would not write such chaotic, meaningless, cacophonous, ungrammatical stuff, if he could invent a melody?”<\/p>\n

(1907 review of\u00a0La Mer<\/em>, p. 94)<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Roy<\/a><\/td>\n\n

Roy Harris \/ William Schuman<\/a><\/h4>\n
Roy Harris: Symphony No. 3 \/ William Schuman: Symphony No. 3 (New York Philharmonic\/Leonard Bernstein)<\/a>\u00a0(1987)<\/h5>\n

“How blessed are they who are born deaf, and are spared the agony of listening to the hideous sounds of Symphony No. 3 by Roy Harris, just performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. \u00a0Roy Harris should have stuck to truck driving instead of insulting music-lovers with his senseless noise.”<\/p>\n

(Letter to the Editor of\u00a0Radio Times<\/em>, 1942, p. 107)<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"La<\/a><\/td>\nDarius Milhaud<\/a><\/b>“We went to the Opera to hear music of the vanguard,\u00a0Maximilian<\/em>\u00a0by Darius Milhaud. \u00a0We clutched our chair. \u00a0But we were hurled out of it by such a hurricane of wrong notes that we found ourselves, half dead, on the stairway, without knowing how we could fall down quite so far. \u00a0The composer knows the grammar, the spelling and the language; but he can speak only Esperanto and Volapuk. \u00a0It is a work of a Communist traveling salesman.”(1932 review, p. 126)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Alexander<\/a><\/td>\n?????? ?????????\u00a0[Sergei Prokofiev]<\/a><\/b>“Mr. Prokofiev’s pieces have been contributions not to the art of music, but to national pathology and pharmacopoeia…. We do not refer particularly to the pianoforte solos composed and played by Mr. Prokofiev, for they, we are sure, invite their own damnation, because there is nothing in them to hold attention… They pursue no esthetic purpose, strive for no recognizable ideal, proclaim no means for increasing the expressive potency of music. \u00a0They are simply perverse. \u00a0They die the death of abortions.”(1918 review, p. 132)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Variations<\/a><\/td>\nMax Reger<\/a><\/b>“This Reger is a sarcastic, churlish fellow, bitter and pedantic and rude. \u00a0He is a sort of musical Cyclops, a strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre of composition. \u00a0In listening to these works…one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works, the photograph that shows something that is like a swollen, myopic beetle with thick lips and sullen expression, crouching on an organ bench.”(1920 article in\u00a0Musical Portraits<\/em>, p. 141)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Streichquartette<\/a><\/td>\nArnold Schoenberg<\/a><\/b>“A regular Friday audience, 90 percent feminine and 100 percent well-bred, sat stoically yesterday through thirty minutes of the most cacophonous world premiere ever heard here — the first performance anywhere of a new Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg….Yesterday’s piece combines the best sound effects of a hen yard at feeding time, a brisk morning in Chinatown and practice hour at a busy music conservatory. \u00a0The effect on the vast majority of hearers is that of a lecture on the fourth dimension delivered in Chinese.”(1940 review in the Philadelphia\u00a0Record<\/em>, p. 163)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Tristan<\/a><\/td>\nRichard Wagner<\/a><\/b>“Heartless sterility, obliteration of all melody, all tonal charm, all music… This revelling in the destruction of all tonal essence, raging satanic fury in the orchestra, this demoniacal, lewd caterwauling, scandal-mongering, gun-toting music, with an orchestral accompaniment slapping you in the face… Hence, the secret fascination that makes it the darling of feeble-minded royalty…of the court monkeys covered with reptilian slime, and of the blas\u00e9 hysterical female court parasites who need this galvanic stimulation by massive instrumental treatment to throw their pleasure-weary frog-legs into violent convulsion…the diabolical din of this pig-headed man, stuffed with brass and sawdust, inflated, in an insanely destructive self-aggrandizement, by Mephistopheles’ mephitic and most venomous hellish miasma, into Beelzebub’s Court Composer and General Director of Hell’s Music — Wagner!”(from J.L. Klein’s 1871\u00a0Geschichte des Dramas<\/em>, p. 237)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

More invective<\/p>\n

“Oh, what can you do with it? It’s like a lot of yaks jumping around!” \u2013 Sir Thomas Beecham on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony<\/p>\n

“Beethoven to me sounds like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there a dropped hammer.” \u2013 John Ruskin<\/p>\n

“Mozart died too soon rather than too late.” \u2013 Glenn Gould<\/p>\n

“He can conduct anything, as long as it’s Bach, Beethoven, or Wagner. He once tried conducting Debussy’s ‘La Mer.’ It came out ‘Das Merde.'” \u2013 An orchestra member on conductor George Sznell.<\/p>\n

“Claude Debussy played the piano with the lid down.” \u2013 Robert Bresson<\/p>\n

“One cannot judge Wagner’s opera, ‘Lohengrin,’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to listen to it a second time.” \u2013 Gioacchino Rossini<\/p>\n

“Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night. Mendelssohn lost.” \u2013 Fred Allen<\/p>\n

“Exit in case of Brahms” \u2013 Sign over the exit of the Boston Symphony Hall, posted by symphony director Philip Hale.<\/p>\n

“Already too loud!” \u2013 Conductor Bruno Walter, on seeing his orchestra members reach for their instruments.<\/p>\n

More about Nicolas Slonimsky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musical insults, you have to take them with a pinch of salt, or you would never carry on! (Perhaps that is the point!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,77,24],"tags":[545,543,542,544,546],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1927"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/247767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}